'Peter is an excellent trainer who gives horses the time they need,' enthuses Irish rider

'I really like this horse, he's really something,' a delighted John Egan said yesterday at Happy Valley after he brought home Lucky Sabre in the final event to complete a double for both himself and trainer Peter Ho. The jockey bounced back from a suspension and was quickly into winning form on Ho's Jade Ruyi in the fifth event, then reinforced the message over the same 1,800-metre course with Lucky Sabre in the last.

'He's a very nice horse, Lucky Sabre,' Egan reiterated later. 'I don't know yet if he's going to make the sort of standard you'd need to run in the International races, that's aiming very high, but he is very good and he keeps improving and he has his heart in the right place.

'When the gap came for him today he really charged into it. When he was beaten at his last start here, I wouldn't say he had that much go wrong, but he didn't have everything go quite right either over the 1,650 metres. Today, the switch up to 1,800 metres showed us the real Lucky Sabre and he will get further, too.'

It was Lucky Sabre's third win over the Happy Valley 1,800m, and the fifth victory this season for the Ho-Egan combination, which seems to be blooming. 'Peter is an excellent trainer who gives horses the time they need,' Egan said. 'You take a horse like Jade Ruyi. There isn't a lot of him and last season he was quite small and a little bit weak. Now a horse like that, if you pushed him too much too early, you wouldn't have a horse at all as a four-year-old. Instead, he's been patient with him and has been able to win two races already this season.'

While Jade Ruyi is scoring in the lower grades, Lucky Sabre is operating at the other end of the scale and his win yesterday, after switching back towards what was thought to be the slower inside part of the track, was full of character. 'Where I was, I didn't really have the option to switch out,' Egan said. 'And it was the last race of the day and the inside had not had that much use, so it might have been better by that stage.'

It was the second time yesterday that Egan's options had been narrowed by champion rider Douglas Whyte. Whyte swept around Jade Ruyi on rival favourite Melrose Star earlier in the day to pocket Egan's mount momentarily in the back straight, but the Irishman was able to slip through inside horses to escape the snooker soon after.